From 1920: "We Shouldn't be Grateful to the Pilgrims."

Omens these: In Paterson, the silk city, little third and fourth class shops are flooded with fine silks to be sold at any price; there has been a panic in silk. A year ago a butcher got $1.35 a pound for his raw calf hides and today he is lucky to get 25 cents; the bottom has fallen out of the leather market. The sign of the night rider appears in the South. The farming industry in convention at Washington demands unlimited federal credit to enable the South to sit on its cotton until the price is 40 cents again, and the West to hold its wheat for $3.00 a bushel; else all are ruined.

If an optimist is a man who makes lemonade out of all the lemons that are handed to him, men Senator Harding is the greatest of all optimists. He has been told by his friends and his critics that he is colorless and without sap, commonplace and dull, weak and servile. Right you are, says the Senator. You have described exactly the kind of man this country needs. It has tried Roosevelt and Wilson, and look. It can't stand the gaff. I am nothing that they were. I am no superman like Roosevelt and no superthinker like Wilson. Therefore, I am just the man you are looking for. How do I know that?

A group of people were recently discussing whether every Presidential election since 1860 had been the most important election since 1860. We do not propose to add 1920 to the list. If a man were to prophesy about 1920 he would say that unless there is a surprising clarification of the issues in the next few months we shall elect a President in 1920 on slogans and attitudes that will seem peculiarly irrelevant in 1922 and 1923 and after.
For good or evil the fact is that we are not now asked to choose between policies.

I follow through the singing trees
Her streaming clouded hair and face
And lascivious dreaming knees
Like gleaming water from some place
Of sleeping streams, or autumn leaves
Slow shed through still, love-wearied air.
She pauses: and as one who grieves
Shakes down her blown and vagrant hair
To veil her face, but not her eyes--
A hot quick spark, each sudden glance,
Or like the wild brown bee that flies
Sweet winged, a sharp extravagance
Of kisses on my limbs and neck.
She whirls and dances through the trees
That life and sway like arms and fleck
Her with quick shadows, and the breeze
Lies on h